Welcome Steemians, E30 fans, followers of this epic restoration!
Since I joined and blogged about the car it seemingly refuses to start unless I attach this to the front bumper...
:)
So this is my 1987 BMW E30:
This is where I started with this particular car in May of 2015:
This is my personal blog about the full on #restoration of a 1980s #BMW which actually turned out to be two restorations and one engine rebuild.
Some people say you don't buy an #E30 you build one. Man I hear that! I'm here to share my story with you and give some insights into what my mechanic and I went through to get this car on the road (again). I'll go through every detail and leave nothing out.
Today I'll go into a recap of the disassembly of the donor and the new base, removing rust and repainting the engine bay and starting reassembly.
So after stripping the old body due to catastrophic corrosion...
Yeah that was a rear frame spring mount. Instant death sentence basically.
I guess you spend most time during restorations with stripping and reassembling cars. Lesson learned and I can't emphasize this enough is that you should take great care in labeling, sorting and storing old parts. You're gonna need some of them, will want to get rid of others later on, will need to restore/fix some and nothing will be more frustrating or time intensive as searching for parts you need and know you have but are unable to find. I learned that the hard way. In the end I put more than 100 parts, screws, etc. on a big table took a picture and posted it on a forum to have the old cracks tell me what's what - true story!
So I had my interior set aside...
...and stripped the rest to prep it for the crusher. One last look at that genuine tire pressure sticker confirming it is an authentic 325i:
And off it goes...
Time then to disassemble another E30 only this time the body condition warrants spending more time on it :)
As you can see the engine is out as I'll be putting in my newly rebuild stroker engine later. Good thing is this car had an engine failure years ago so it was largely disposed of. I bought it in 2014, it had been deregistered since 2008. The fatally damaged engine block:
So lot's to chew on for the metals scrapper: engine block, rusty exhaust from header to muffler, transmission and some more 'spare parts':
Enough room then for the new engine but first some work to do in the engine bay in terms of cleaning and painting.
Lots to do on the inside as well. Long story short EVERYTHING goes including the carpet and that rather tasteful if completely out of place Personal Nardi steering wheel which was quite popular in 70s and 80s Porsches, Ferraris and Audis.
So up it goes let's check the substance of this bugger...
Hmmm...there's nothing there really. Not even a fluke of rust only some botanic signs of life due to the long early retirement. These are just the top spots to check on E30s along the rocker panels, rear apron, jack attach points etc. and they all looked great.
First order of business before putting anything back into that engine bay was the removal of any dirt or surface corrosion and seal and paint it good. We did that in January of 2016 including manually removing all rusty paint, sealing and priming it and in the end putting some fresh paint on. The main part to watch here is the horizontal plane next to the firewall which often gets hit by corrosion. I even took the trouble of photgraphing the bottom side :)...
There we go then. We let it dry a bit and let RL issues take over for a while until continuing on March. Issue on that day in March was that it was unusually hot in the shop somewhere around 30deg C which meant the paint didn't stick at all. It works for now but will need to be taken care of by a professional at some point to give it a perfect finish.
So after that paint had dried and some more parts had been sourced the often completely rotten heat and sound insulation in the transmission tunnel and along the firewall was replaced and fitted.
The engine then, it was broken in proper more than a year before, had clocked around 4.000km and was fresh as ever.
You might notice the headers are different ones. That is due to the fact that my original so called 'shorty headers' by IE in California didn't have equal pipe lengths thereby completely obliterating any potential performance gains. It did sound nicely but as I've always put a priority on mechanical perfection and sensible changes to the motor and car in terms of performance I went out and found a nice little shop who sell customized headers for BMW M20 engines with equal pipe lengths, stainless steel and a nice fit and finish. It fit nicely even though one exhaust header sealing had to be replaced because the old headers partially destroyed one sealing due to a tiny deviation in fit along the cylinder head.
Long story short we put it in the same day:
Whadda ya say shall we try to start it and check out the sound with open headers!? Yeah I thought so...put some good headphones on if you have some handy:
Ok so that's working. No worries as always in this epic story it will fail to start at some point but that won't be the engine's fault. Check parts 2 and 3 if you'd like to know how this motor came together.
Anyway unfortunately one can't leave the exhaust open like that in civilized driving conditions so I needed a cat. Preferably one that can facilitate good outflow, doesn't have too much resistance and most importantly fits inbetween the headers' X-pipe and the muffler which I chose to leave stock M20B25 - in this case it's a BOSAL one. I'll later find out that the near racing metal cat I aquired in combination with the headers are so loud and distinctive that a bassy and deep growling muffler is actually better suited to this than the stock one but more on that later.
The first choice however fell on a standard M20B25 BMW catalytic converter. Well it was worth a shot shall we say as it didn't fit AT ALL.
Looks alright you might say. Well, yeah only that the front was a complete misfit with the x-pipe:
See here:
No welding in the world is going to make that work. Thing why I opted for the stock cat in the first place was that it would facilitate a near stock exhaust system combined with headers. At this point I realized that won't happen. There is no way to alter the header/x-pipe location at all and so there had to be a compact cat solution that fits under the car and has roughly equal pipe diameters from front to back.
I went out to hunt for a good cat and bought some stainless steel exhaust pipes with a diameter of around 55mm.
For now this was my exhaust setup :)
I was going to go into detail on the exhaust and start on the interior but I'm out of time for now.
I'll leave you with the overview of this (always evolving as I always find stuff I had forgotten had happened in the beginning) overview of this epic project. We are now in March 2016. See you next time!
Part 1 deals with the history of the donor car until it dies the first time https://steemit.com/cars/@peterschroeter/7-years-in-the-making-1-rebuilding-and-restoring-a-30-year-old-bmw-twice
Part 2 deals with a short revival, planning and building the new engine (head) https://steemit.com/cars/@peterschroeter/7-years-in-the-making-2-rebuilding-and-restoring-a-30-year-old-bmw-twice
Part 3 deals with finishing the engine (block), installation and the final death of the donor https://steemit.com/cars/@peterschroeter/7-years-in-the-making-part-3-rebuilding-and-restoring-a-30-year-old-bmw-e30-twice
Part 4 goes into disassembly of the donor and the new base, planning the exhaust system and restoring components
Part 5 will go into the engine and drivetrain installation and interior assembly
Part 6 will be devoted to the pain this car gave us because it fought tooth and nail in order to not be put back on the road
Part 7 the final act will go into lessons learned, things left to do, impressions and how it actually drives
The inside of that engine case looks clean enough to eat off of. Great work, beautiful car. Bummer on the pipe mismatch, it looks like it might be off by over a foot!
I just got my first BMW today and this is probably a better time and place than any to post-brag about it, I guess!
2004, 35k, $8000. Feels like I stole it.
Someone kept this thing in a time capsule after the first of two owners drove it 27000 miles on a three-year lease.
Wow... Drools...
Oh man I always loved that lovely little first gen Z4. If you haven't noticed the extended hood/shoulder line and the rocker panel line form a 'Z' in conjunction with the cross through the BMW roundel. One of Chris Bangle's coolest designs I think. You might want to throw some nice 18" BMW rims on there, it will go a long way to make it look even better.
It really does look like it just rolled off the factory floor and that is an '04. Incredible. That 2.5 engine has a beautiful intake howling love that engine sound. Take good care of it and enjoy it! Congrats!
In about 50.000 miles you'll start to notice an increased oil consumption which is really the only downside to this long-stroke engine design. It's usually down to the double VANOS sealing rings slowly giving up. If you get there and you remember this post just google 'BEISAN systems' ;)
Ah, thanks for the info! Given how little I drive, I'll have to check back with you in about 50 years =)
Cool, feel free to do that. By the way I just found a pic of your car in 3.0L and 19" M3 rims parked in Istanbul in 2008:
How'd it get all the way over here, then? Those liars told me both owners lived in my state! =)
Hello steemit community, my racing event will begin shortly decide vehicle teams soon ! : https://steemit.com/cars/@doctortesla/hotwheels-carburetor-kings-vs-serious-speed-competitor-team-entry
https://steemit.com/cars/@alijavaid/new-cars-coming-in-2018 must watch
My friend has a BMW... it always need to go to the shop. And he bought new.
not a fan.
The relevance being? Did he buy it new in the late 80s? If so please let me know for what it had to go to the shop :)
If it's some newer model I can relate they're a disaster, all the German Premiums are. That said, I'd never recommend to anyone to buy a car new, let alone a German premium car - your friend must be out of his mind or simply got played by the ads :). Losing 30% the moment he rolled off the lot must also have been a pain which is the number 1 reason I'd always go for 2nd or 3rd hand otherwise you're the 'beta tester' of the product you acquired or as it's BMW most likely leased.
You got my upvote don't get me wrong. Anyone who can spread the word about warning potential victims of this is a friend here but this simply has nothing to do with the cars from 30 years ago. They built the spiritual foundation that is today being eroded! When I say they of course I mean stuff like the E30 and E34 etc. even in the late 80s something like the $100.000+ 750i on occasion swallowed that same amount in the shop at BMW...when they were still selling it!!! The ultra reliable, yet luxurious and techy German super cars are simply a myth.
wow you did a lot of work. how difficult was it to take out the engine. did you have an engine hoist?
Yeah engine hoist is a must of course. On the E30 and all BMW's from that era it's generally quite convenient as they have rather huge and square engine bays. We usually assembled the clutch and transmission and cable tree to the engine and then lifted it into the transmission tunnel at an angle and then down and back onto the attachment points on the front axle mount.
All in all with an M20 engine it's not that big of a deal. As I've stated in a previous part of this blog by the end of the first car we were down to 4 hrs engine out and back in :).
If you have anything larger than an M20 such as an S38 (3.6L M5 straight six engine) it is more sensible to put the front axle onto some solid base and put the engine with the transmission on that, fix it to the mounts and then lower the entire car down onto the front axle mount. That way you do it like they did at the factory and that's a pretty elegant way of installation but with the M20 you can usually just assemble it, lower it down and watch for the shift stick assembly which sometimes will be in the way of the transmission (happened to us and took us about 1 hour to figure out:).
Oh and just for fun here are the steps as I remember them:
Now you're pretty much good to go to lift the car, disconnect driveshaft from transmission and disconnect engine mounts from front axle and lift it out...
Yeah I'm kinda used to this operation :)
Upvoted as usual :)
I do a series called becoming one with nature and just released the 4th one. It is going okay at the moment but if anyone could Resteem and Upvote that would mean the world as i think the pictures are pretty good :p
Thanks
Otto
Hey buddy @peterschroeter... Thanks for sharing your whole experience of this build.🚗🏎️ If these pictures are to be believed, I must have to give you all the credit to put in you heart and sole into the project. After all a master piece does demand its creators blood and sweat.
As they say, you are what you drive. And now with the pictures, I know what a sweet ride this one is, and that only is a reflection of your personality... Peace ✌️
Wow what a nice and insightful comment man! This actually makes me feel even better about the whole thing cuz you reminded me of something that sometimes you forget when you're in this painful process of shedding the blood sweat tears and dollars to make it all happen.
Appreciate the comment and glad you like it!
Hey buddy @peterschroeter... You deserve all the praises for what you have achieved. I know how difficult it can be to pour in a lot of time and efforts, not to mention the $$ bills, for a dream project, which is really close to your heart. And you have achieved it. Way to go man! Peace ✌️
Wow, this is just awesome!
For an older car, it really looks great now :) Also, 7 years is a great amount of time for a project like that! Well done that you were able to be so patient :)
hello! I have a bmw e90 ( 320d). There were problems with the distribution chain. I do not know why the new models are not as reliable as they are in the past. Probably the "bear" is the best chioce.
It's called planned obsolescence at least that's what it started with in the mid 90s. Nowadays it's just lazy development and the downside of disributed suppliers and just in time delivery creating ever greater problems in terms of make or buy and the consequent quality issues that entails. I'll tell you this, the rocker arms for this car I bought 3 times and before I found the right quality part in a small california parts dealer's online shop I actually went to BMW and asked them. Their part was gonna be more than 3 times what I paid for the 'good part' I ended up buying so I asked them what assurances I have that the part they deliver actually is worth the money. You know what they said? 'We can only assure you that the part is within our manufacturing standards requirements we give to suppliers. We cannot tell you what manufacturer it's going to be and generally nothing about the quality except that it meets the standard.'
I later found someone who had bought the BMW rocker arms, they turned out to be FEBI parts with milled off logos. No joke. The part apparently fits BMW's 'standard' of the day. I dismissed that part right out of the box, it was a joke in terms of finish. If you had delivered that kind of part into the BMW engine assembly line 30 years ago they'd have kicked your ass off the factory grounds faster than you could count up your POS rocker arms.
Today it's all a question of liability. The finance and legal guys and girls get together and determine exactly what threshold is good enough so they can make the product function for a while and just bad enough to satisfy cost and supplier reqs. In the end some poor fucker who has no idea what so ever about manufacturing or acceptable standards of fit and finish decides the 'tolerances' for third party parts and spreads the contracts out over just enough suppliers so that no one ever has any chance of holding anyone liable least of which the big B.
Different world here guys. No nostalgia and no dreaming just a raw fact and it can be explained rather easily.
https://steemit.com/cars/@alijavaid/new-cars-coming-in-2018 must watch
That is some beauty. I wonder why they do not make such beautiful cars these days.
I wonder if people are gonna say that about today's cars in 30 years time. Can't see it really but then again the guys back in the 80s probably didn't see that coming either.
The beauty of this design language is its pure minimalist style. Basically the car only has 2 defining lines that are more or less straight and wrap around it. It's a very nice job in terms of design and proportions no doubt!
One of my dream cars is a restored BMW 2002 converted to EV.
Let me know when you got that working :). Personally I think it'd be hilarious if I saw an '02 and it went by silently with slight tire roar and electric hum!
Hell yeah, those things [2002s] were tight cars in their day. Cool looking, incredible visibility, good handling, and that 4 cyl perfectly matched to manual transmission. Only early 1970s 4 cyl car in my experience that could counquer the Waldo Grade (Mill Valley to Golden Gate Bridge) without slowing down. Porsche 914 doesn't count, well because... Porsche.
They probably weighed just about the same at around 2000lbs right!?
It was absolutely the forefather of all these later hits such as the E21, E30 and the quick and nimble yet flashy and comfortable power saloon that would become such a runner in the late 80s. For me though the design language only began to get the proportions right with the E21. The '02 still has lots of ponton bodystyle going on that makes it look somewhat awkward imho.
You did an amazing job.
Man that's a lot of work. I really like the color of it though, slick
In the beginning I had my doubts with the color but didn't really have a choice cuz I needed a body and my only requirements were not white, not red, not green. This actually is kind of a greenish color, it's called 'Delphingrau metallic'. Matter of fact it absolutely covers the entire range of a Dolphin's skin. From dark grey almost black to a medium grey on to a rather greenish metallic grey depending on light.
Beautiful car
Great project!
I am a BMW fan too ! That E30 looks awesome !
One of the best cars in my oppinion, i also love E34s
Yeah I mean all the 'Luthe era' cars are epic also the E32 and E31 but I would agree with you that the E34 and E30 are on top of the list. Especially in M trim...
Parked in front of my old place one day, genuine M5 3.6
Where i live those E31 and E32 are not common to see but there are still few E34s and E30s, great cars.
amazing :) good job :)
What a lovely car, congratulations man you had made an amazing restoration of one of the best cars ever made. I love the e30 models, and the 80 germans car. I have a w123 mercedes Benz 1983 im slowly restoring, you can see a couple of pics on my blog. Its not that shiny as yours, but im trying to slowly restore it to that point. thanks for sharing, I would totally be in contact with you.
Thanks, will for sure check out your blog. Love the W123! With Benz guys it's always 'that was the last real one built like a tank' and mostly they are able to settle on the 123 fitting that bill.
Take your time with that restoration! This project in total took less than 3 weeks but the time was spread across 7 years, 2 bodies, 3 engines and 2 workshop locations meanwhile I moved 400 miles away during half time so that stretched things out tremendously.
I love all BMW types. I really liked your post. You have a jewel.
This is so cool! I know pretty much next to nothing about engines, but your post has changed that a little bit. I´d like to learn more about it, i don´t like being at the mercy of garage guys :) Also, i am absolutely loving that car!
Oh please feel free to ask me anything. Most things I should be able to give at least some advice on without taking too long. Garage guys are merciful gods or merciless cockroaches - mostly the latter so caution is advised as you rightly said :).
I'm actually thinking about throwing together a separate blog post just on planning and building the engine and why what works how because I didn't have a clue about any of that before I started building it and learned A LOT in the process.
Thanks for reading!
Also if you have some spare time, grab a tea or coffee (or high octane beverage:) and check out the existing post about planning the engine:
https://steemit.com/cars/@peterschroeter/7-years-in-the-making-2-rebuilding-and-restoring-a-30-year-old-bmw-twice
Thank you for sharing, it looks immaculate after all the love!
You're welcome, will steem on! However it isn't quite as immaculate as it looks on the pics. There a myriad of dents and scratches from the first 20 years and then the last 10 where it's been off the road. I'm still acquainting it to daily driving to find all potential problem spots in terms of mechanical and electrical functions. Once that is done I'm planning to find a good paintshop to maybe even out the small stuff without completely repainting it. Not every experienced with the whole paintshop thing so we'll see...
That said, I'm not objective here so I agree it looks great but I still see every last detail that's not right :)
Incredible work on the car and even more amazing documentation of the process. I'm giving you a standing ovation :)
Well thank you for that Sir! Glad you're enjoying it.
Feel free to check out the older and upcoming documentation :).
woow that was a great job you are very brave to do it !!
Love this! So many blogs and videos are from people restoring American muscle cars, it is refreshing to see a BMW brought back to possibly BETTER than new! Beautiful car Peter!
Thanks, glad you like it! Currently it's better than new only in some departments (engine, performance, suspension, transmission) while others (paint, electrical, equipment) still lag behind. But I'm planning to get to all of that in the future!
Awesome to see an E30 properly restored with a large majority of them being turned into drift missles. Not hating on anyone doing that as I would love a 1JZ E30 drift car, but a nice mint E30 is hard to come by these days. Amazing job man!
is interesting how you restored is car
@peterschcroeter, interesting read. Thanks for sharing your journey in rebuilding your car. This sure takes alot of dedication, time and effort. Well done!
Nicely done! I had an auto shop instructor who had one. It's been a while and can't recall what he put into it but it was quick! Sadly, he decided to sell it and let some students test drive it. Long story short, the car didn't survive the test drive :( It was a shame, I would have bought it myself if I had the extra cash.
finally, she is out...you know what they say, old but gold....that's some beauty sir. #enjoy
Good work, congrats.
huuh boy thats a pretty tough job you did there !
Edelstahl Auspuff Anlage da rostet so schnell nichts mehr :)
Nice Post SteemOn
Thanks, will do!
Just wait till I get to the interior then you can take that 'tough' word and put it to real good use!!
The muffler actually is not stainless steel but I bought it off of a guy who bought it new in like 2002 and had it in his garage for 15 years so I'm hoping it'll live for 2-3 years minimum.
i see ! it looked like stainless ;)
Servus SteemOn
No at some point I had to cut expenditure cuz everything just kept piling up. I want to go for a stainless solution at some point especially cuz the stock muffler is way too toned down for the metal cat and headers in combination with the relatively loud valvetrain. Thing is as you'll see in the next part the current system is welded into one piece so headers and x-pipe (plugged), x-pipe welded to stainless pipes welded to cat welded to pipes and the pipes welded to the muffler. So switching the muffler means it's an exhaust out job.
Servus!
The front of this BMW looks badass man.
Thanks man, especially with the lights and kidney out it has a baby charger look if you ask me :)
A lot of hard work that. Looks like it's paying off or already paid off.
Yeah it was. In terms of spiritual payoff that has happened already as the first 500km I drove this thing straight home were pretty enjoyable plus I repeatedly had to remind myself that it was actually happening and that I was actually in this car :). Being able to tease and bug the wannabe go-fast Audi, VW and newer Benz types was an additional bonus. They just don't see it coming when a small box of a BMW pulls away at 190km/h.
The bimmers and one Alpina I encountered during that drive along with most older cars didn't bother to tailgate above 160km/h - I like them.
Financially speaking (I know not what you meant but some might be wondering) it actually also paid off. When I bought the base car I paid 1.100EUR. The body alone in this condition nowadays is worth around 5k, complete car not less than 12k. Of course no one will ever pay for the time and stress but it's good to know that the thing holds and appreciates in value.
love restorations great read keep us up to date hey
Thanks! Will do, Part 5 is in the making...
Ok, I don't want to say this without acknowledging you've put in a LOT of work and done a fine job from what I can tell.
But dammit man you make me feel old! The 325i was my dream car when I was young, and to hear you mention the age and show the condition, well, shit.
Hey no worries, it was my dream car too when I was young only that was in the late 90s early 00s. Back then these cars still went as contemporary daily driver BMWs that you could even pick up from some dealer showrooms. Prices were in the gutter back then. I bought a rust free 316i (my first E30) for 1.200EUR in 2002 2nd owner.
That car would easily go for 15k today if I hadn't spun it into a freeway railing at close to 100mph :(.
But I get what you're saying, I find myself thinking the same thing when I work on it and it literally looks like 30 years old and you're thinking 'damn, wasn't it just yesterday that this car was still as good as new!?'. Time flies.
Fly is an understatement lol. For perspective, mustangs sell restored for 5-10 times what the sod for NEW 😮
Awesome, so i will hire you for revamping my BMW soon :-)
Depending on where you're located and given that I freelance - I'm open for new projects :)
Munich
good post!
Thanks glad you like it!
your work on the headers was sick
OHHHHHHHH man that is so beautiful !!!
That's great.
Well done, my friend. Enjoy it ;)
great work
Way to go man, nothing beats a classic.
Agreed! Will do! Thanks.
good post
Thank you! I'll keep on it :)
Updated, one pic was duplicated. Replaced now.
Nice restoration! If you are a fan of 90's beamers too there's this gnarly E36 this guy owns at ZWINGFILMS.
Thanks!
I love 90s bimmers but the E36 is kind of the red headed stepchild. My Mom used to have one and I actually loved to drive that still nimble and light but already refined and smooth. Anyway I'd always go for the E46. For me the 3 series gens always go one good one bad E30 > E46 > F30 the stuff in between seems like I don't know channel stuffing :).
Mmmm. An E46. Hard to find a virgin one of those that hasn't been modded to shit. I'm with you though. F32 ftw.
True. Hard but not impossible you just gotta ignore the mileage. This one had clocked 185.000 mls...when we bought it :)
So much shit has happened to me in this car, with this car and generally it's just always been there since then that I really feel attached to it. Almost more so than the E30 :). They are good cars but with this gen you really gotta know where to look and know how to fix it otherwise they're a moneypit.
Oh and thanks for the referral to #Zwingfilms pretty slick presentation and content!
good post!
I Got A Camero instead lol i do want the i8 tho bitcoin here i come lol :) nice post
What happened to that piston on the photo, valve dropped?
I don't think so as I still have the intact cylinder head from that engine. I don't really know what happened to it to be honest.
It has a hole in it right? almost valve shape :)
You could be right of course, frankly I don't remember exactly if we took that engine apart or if it was the block still in it and the head separately. Either way that piston must have collided with something at high rpms and yes it looks like a valve. As soon as I recover the head I'll let you know if a valve or two are missing :)
I built my engine in such a way that the valves clear the piston even when fully opened at dead center so even if my belt rips and the timings are messed up there won't be a collision. The only other mechanical collision could happen if a rocker arm disintegrates so I put in the reinforced stable to 7500rpm ireland engineering ones and trust they won't break :).
Are you planning to tune the engine also if you are going with racing rockers?
It is, I rebuilt it completely losely based on the Alpina C2/2 2.7L M20 engine only I used a 272deg Cam and they used a 268deg. Check my post here:
https://steemit.com/cars/@peterschroeter/7-years-in-the-making-2-rebuilding-and-restoring-a-30-year-old-bmw-twice
The rockers are mostly preventive as I haven't pushed the redline in the ECU, it's still around 6500rpm but I figured better safe than sorry. The cylinder head is really overdone for this but at least I know it's solid.
I love your car already :) Few years back we were working on 1991 320 IS. Italian version of M3